[URBANTH-L]CFP: Life in Motion. Shifting Spaces, Transcending Times, Crossing Borders (Brno, Postgraduate)

[Angela Jancius]

8th Postgraduate Conference: Life in Motion; Shifting Spaces,
Transcending Times, Crossing Borders

School of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, 28th - 30th June
2007

Seventeen years after the onset of revolutionary changes in 1989,
Central and Eastern European societies are still confronted with their
histories. Memories and recollections of the past are contested and the
past is painstakingly constituted through the interplay of collective
construction, political bargains, reversals, rationalizing of refusals
to come to terms with it as well as attempts to recognize the past and
cope with it. Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have witnessed
unprecedented spatial and population shifts and splits which marked the
20th century globally. Many minorities which were often local majorities
or equal in number were left in the aftermath of wars as mere memories
that quickly faded due to the rapid intrusion of communism. The process
of building societies which are not just ethno-culturally heterogeneous
but also open to all diverse groups has been contingent on coming to
terms with the past. This process became the arena for opening ways to
facing current challenges such as migration, borders dissolution and
violation of local social and economic balances.

Since 1989 CEE societies have undergone unparalleled social change,
however, the expected reforms in the spheres of law, public policy,
culture, media, economy and social policies have been substantially
delayed and compromised. The simultaneous emergence of free-market
economies and pluralist politics led to situations in which the state
quickly withdrew or collapsed, and distinctions between state,
collective, and private domains became unclear. It has been in the
interest of those actors that emerged in this initial phase of change to
prolong a specifically post-socialist culture between socialism and the
free market. This may have decisively contributed to the Eurosceptic
backlash in the ranks of particular mainstream political forces and in
specific cultural segments and sections of societies in some CEE
countries. What is in this light the meaning of "the big European
switch" of 2004 and its upcoming enlargement follow-up? How 'Central and
Eastern European' have the CEE countries stayed and Western Europe
become? What are the reconstituted boundaries?

Proposals should be sent, as email attachments, to:
tomasekm at fss.muni.cz at the latest January 31, 2007 further details:
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/announce/show.cgi?ID=152432

One of the possible subjects of conference submissions is:

"Sustaining and Crossing Social boundaries"

- negotiating and symbolizing ethnic identities; European and
sub-European identities; multiple identities; spaces and narratives of
identity (contestation of space, creation of temporal boundaries)
- exclusion/inclusion of "minorities"; new social and cultural
divisions; social exclusion and selective memory; social reproduction,
cohesion, identity of the marginalized
- displaced persons, refugees and human rights; reconciliation with
traumatic pasts; violence and memory; struggle for recognition
- consuming actors, between desires and disciplines; media culture:
from investigative journalism to tabloids

with kind regards,

Marcel Tomasek

School of Social Studies,Sociology Dep., Jostova 10,
602 00 Brno, Czech Republic
phone: 00420 549497611
fax: 00420 549 491 920
Email: tomasekm at fss.muni.cz